[Congressional Record: June 5, 2008 (Senate)]
[Page S5133-S5135]
PREWAR IRAQ INTELLIGENCE
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I am pleased to report to the Senate
that the Senate Intelligence Committee has completed its review of
prewar intelligence related to Iraq. Today the committee filed with the
Senate and released to the public the two final reports of what has
been called phase 2 of the review. One of these reports examines the
public statements of senior policymakers prior to the war and compares
those statements to the intelligence that was available to those senior
policymakers at the time they made those statements. The second report
looks at the intelligence activities of individuals working for the
Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Policy.
The first of these reports, report on public statements, has
obviously been the most controversial aspect of the committee's work on
prewar intelligence. That was inevitable. Much has been said and much
has been written since the beginning of the war about how we got into
it. In the end, the committee did conclude that the administration
repeatedly presented intelligence as fact, when in reality it was
unsubstantiated and often contradicted what they were saying, or even
was nonexistent.
The committee's July 2004 report found that the prewar assessments on
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intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction were clearly
flawed. There was a 511-page report and it decimated the whole concept
of weapons of mass destruction being there. It turned out most of them
were left over from the Iran-Iraq war. Nuclear scientists were kept
around, but they had nothing to do. People began to draw conclusions.
They understood, at some of the highest levels, that this intelligence
was there, but they ignored it. The report we are releasing today
indicates that many of the public statements of the Bush administration
were, in fact, accurate and substantiated by underlying intelligence,
even though that intelligence itself was flawed. So we tried to be
fair. No one, however, should interpret these findings as vindication
of how the administration was using intelligence to sell to the
American people and to the Congress the war in Iraq.
This report documents significant instances in which the
administration went beyond what the intelligence community knew--well
beyond what the intelligence committee knew or believed, most notably
on the false assertion that Iraq and al-Qaida had an operational
relationship, a partnership, and the manipulative attempt to suggest,
inaccurately, that Iraq had any complicity in the attacks of September
11--shockingly wrong statements which were made and made and made.
Many of them obviously were made prior to the State of the Union
Address in an attempt to prepare American public opinion. But, on the
other hand, many of them continued well afterwards and even until
recently. The committee also found that when administration officials
were making statements related to weapons of mass destruction, they
often spoke in declarative and unequivocal terms that went well beyond
the confidence levels reflected in the intelligence community's
intelligence assessments and products.
They omitted caveats. In other words, if the Department of Energy and
INR in the Department of State, their intelligence wing, disagreed--
those were omitted. Anything that didn't agree was omitted, it was
ignored. Dissenting views by intelligence agencies were ignored and did
not acknowledge significant gaps in what we knew. In other words, they
had a message they were driving and they stopped at nothing to do that.
In short, administration officials failed to accurately portray what
was known, what was not known, and what was suspected about Iraq and
the threat it represented to our national security. When the Nation is
weighing the decision to go to war, they deserve the complete and
unvarnished truth, and they did not get it in the buildup to the war in
Iraq.
Additionally, the committee found instances where public statements
selectively used intelligence information which supported a particular
policy viewpoint; that is, public statements made by high officials,
the highest officials, and at the same time they completely ignored
contradictory information that weakened the position which they
declared to be the truth. While on its face the statement might have
been accurate, it nevertheless presented a slanted picture to those who
were unaware of the hidden intelligence. Intelligence is complex. It is
an art, not just a science. You have to establish all aspects of what
goes into an intelligence product before you can make any kind of a
declaration or decision.
In fact, the committee's report cites several areas in which the
administration's public statements were not supported by the
intelligence, and I very specifically wish to state them now. No. 1,
statements and implications by the President and the Secretary of
State, suggesting Iraq and al-Qaida had a partnership or Iraq had
provided al-Qaida with weapons training were not substantiated by the
intelligence. No. 2, statements by the President and the Vice
President, indicating Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of
mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United
States were contradicted by available intelligence information. No. 3,
statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the
postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political security, the
economics, et cetera, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties
expressed in the intelligence products. The results have been there for
us to see. No. 4, statements by the President and Vice President, prior
to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's
chemical weapons production capability and activities, did not reflect
the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such
production was ongoing. No. 5, the Secretary of Defense statement that
the Iraqi Government operated underground WMD--weapons of mass
destruction--facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional
airstrikes because they were underground, so deeply buried--that was
not substantiated by available intelligence information. No. 6, the
intelligence community did not confirm that Mohamed Atta met an Iraqi
intelligence officer in Prague in 2001, as the Vice President has
repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly claimed--and may do so again today.
That is terribly important. There was all kinds of information which so
totally contradicts that it should be embarrassing, but it was not, and
they went ahead and used it. No connection between Mohamed Atta and
Iraqi intelligence.
In addition, the administration's misuse of intelligence prior to the
war was aided by selective declassification of intelligence reporting.
The executive branch exercises the prerogative to classify information
in order to protect national security. Unlike Congress, it can
declassify information unilaterally, and it can do so with great ease.
The administration manipulated and exploited this declassification
authority in the lead-up to the war, and disclosed intelligence at a
time and in a manner of its choosing, knowing others attempting to
disclose additional details that might provide balance or improved
accuracy would be prevented from so doing under the threat of criminal
prosecution. So they could declassify what they wanted. Nobody else
could do anything.
This unlevel playing field allowed senior officials to disclose and
discuss sensitive intelligence reports when they supported the
administration's policy objectives and keep out of the discourse
information that did not support those objectives.
In preparing a report on public statements, the committee
concentrated on those statements that were central to the debate over
the decision to go to war in 2002-2003. We identified five major policy
speeches made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary
of State Colin Powell during this period as the most significant
expressions of how the Bush administration communicated intelligence
judgments to the American people, to the Congress, and to the
international community. Additional statements made by senior
administration officials during this same timeframe, containing
assertions not included in the major policy speeches, were examined as
well and they are part of our report.
To the point: The statements we examined were made by the individuals
involved in the decision to go to war and in convincing the American
public to support that decision. The committee will be criticized for
not examining statements made by Members of Congress. A bipartisan
majority of the committee--bipartisan--agreed these statements do not
carry the same weight of authority as statements made by the President
and others in the executive branch. It was the President and his senior
advisers who were pushing the policy of invasion, not the Congress. In
addition, Members of Congress did not have--do not have--the same ready
access to intelligence as the senior executive branch policymakers. We
do not see raw intelligence data. We do not get PDEs. We do not receive
the daily briefing and were not briefed every morning by the Nation's
senior intelligence officers.
It is important to note we did not receive the October NIE, National
Intelligence Estimate, critical to the vote, until 3 days before the
Senate was expected to vote. Was that initiated by the administration?
No. It was initiated, requested and finally agreed to and then rushed
up very quickly because Senator Bob Graham was chairman of the
Intelligence Committee at that time, and he asked for it.
As I said, the truth of how intelligence was used or misused is not
black and white. Supporters from both sides will point to specific
findings in this report to bolster their arguments. I consider that to
be evidence that the
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committee's findings are fair and objective. Our job was to compare
statements to intelligence and render a narrow judgment as to whether
the statement was substantiated. In those instances where a statement
is not substantiated by the intelligence, the committee renders no
judgment as to why. All we were interested in was the facts.
The second report we are releasing today deals with operations of the
Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. It is a very important
report. A February 2007 report from the Department of Defense inspector
general addresses many of the issues the committee had originally
intended to examine relating to this office. That report concluded that
the Policy Office of the Pentagon had inappropriately disseminated an
alternative intelligence analysis, drawing a link between Iraq and al-
Qaida terrorists--again what the administration wanted--who carried out
the attacks on September 11. This hypothesis has been thoroughly
examined by the intelligence community and no link was found. That,
however, did not stop this office from concocting its own intelligence
analysis and presenting it to senior policymakers. The committee first
uncovered this attempt by DOD policy officials to shape and politicize
intelligence in order to bolster the administration's policy in our
July 2004 report and the inspector general's review. Both of these were
confirmed.
The committee's own investigation of the policy office's activities
had been abruptly terminated by the former chairman of the Intelligence
Committee in July of 2004 because the inspector general's report
thoroughly covered the issues of alternative analysis when the
committee investigation was restarted in 2007, it focused on
clandestine meetings between DOD policy officials and Iranians in Rome
and Paris in 2001 and 2003.
These meetings were facilitated by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian
exile and intelligence fabricator implicated in the 1986 Iran Contra
scandal. During these meetings, intelligence was collected, but it was
not shared with the intelligence community. It went right around the
intelligence community, including the CIA. They knew nothing about it.
George Tenet indicated there was no possible way he knew anything about
this.
The committee's findings paint a disturbing picture of Pentagon
policy officials who were distrustful of the intelligence community and
undertook the collection of sensitive intelligence without coordinating
their activities. It was a rogue operation. It went to high levels in
the administration; it went right to the National Security Council,
totally bypassing all other intelligence agencies. It is infuriating
and not the way intelligence should be handled at all.
The actions of DOD officials to blindly disregard the red flags over
the role played by Mr. Ghorbanifar in these meetings and to wall off
the intelligence community from its activities and the information it
obtained were improper and demonstrated a fundamental disdain for the
intelligence community's role in vetting sensitive sources.
The committee's 2004 report presented evidence that the DOD policy
office attempted to shape the CIA's terrorism analysis in late 2002,
and when it failed, prepared an alternative intelligence analysis
attacking the CIA for not embracing a link between Iraq and the 9/11
terrorist attacks. So the CIA and the intelligence community were
trying to do what they could, and these people were just end-running
them because that is what the White House wanted to see. And then, you
know, it was a disgrace, an embarrassment to the Nation. The Department
of Defense inspector general found himself that these actions were
highly inappropriate.
Our most recent report shows that these rogue actions of this office
were not isolated. The committee's body of work on Iraq-related
intelligence--a series of six reports issued over a 4-year period--
demonstrate why congressional oversight is essential in evaluating
America's intelligence collection and analytical activities.
During the course of its investigation, the committee found that the
October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons
of mass destruction was based on stale, fragmentary, and speculative
intelligence reports and replete with unsupported judgments. Troubling
incidents were reported in which internal dissent and warnings about
the veracity of intelligence on Iraq were ignored in the rush to get to
war.
The committee's investigation also revealed how administration
officials applied pressure on intelligence analysts prior to the war
for them to support links between Iraq and the terrorists responsible
for the attacks of September 11, none of which existed.
Our investigation detailed how the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed
Chalabi attempted to influence the U.S. policy on Iraq by providing
false information through defectors directed at convincing the United
States at the higher levels that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction and had links to terrorists and how this false information
was embraced despite warnings and fabrication.
The committee's investigation also documented for the public how the
administration ignored the prewar judgments of the intelligence
community that the invasion would destabilize security in Iraq and
provide al-Qaida with an opportunity to exploit the situation and
increase attacks against U.S. forces during and after the war. After 5
years and the loss of over 4,000 American lives, these ignored
judgments were tragically prescient.
Overall, the findings and conclusions of the committee's Iraq
investigation were an important catalyst in bringing about subsequent
legislative and administrative reforms of the intelligence community so
that these mistakes will never be repeated again, hopefully.
In conclusion, it has been a long, hard road for the committee to get
to this point. There have been and continue to be a lot of finger-
pointing and accusations of partisanship. It is important to remember
that this undertaking was a unanimous decision--phase 1 and phase 2--
was a unanimous decision of the committee in February of 2004. That it
took such a long time to do is another subject. It is also important to
remember that the committee adopted these two reports, both reports, by
a vote of 10 to 5--in other words, bipartisan.
In undertaking these additional lines of inquiry, the committee acted
to tell a complete story of how intelligence was not only collected and
analyzed prior to the Iraq invasions but how it was publicly used in
authoritative statements made by the highest officials in the Bush
administration in furtherance of its policy to overthrow Saddam Hussein
and more.
I believe these reports will help answer some of the many lingering
questions surrounding the Nation's misguided decision to launch the war
in Iraq.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cardin). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
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